The Corrida

Corrida, that's the word for a bullfight. I went to my first (last?) bullfight last night. Felix (my French roommate, don’t worry, he’ll have an entry to himself in a little bit) has his brother, his brother’s Canadian friend and his brother's Canadian friend’s Canadian girlfriend (they’re lawyers, we talked about lawyerly things. Oh and they’re the English Canada kind of Canadian, not the quebecois stuff) visiting for the weekend. The bullfights aren’t always in Valencia, they’re only here for a week this summer (they come back in March), so we figured we’d go see it while we had the chance.

During the World Cup games, Spaniards marched around with their Spanish flags: red and yellow with a coat of arms on the middle stripe, justified a little bit to the left (that’s the first time I’ve ever used that word outside of Microsoft Word). Some flags, however, were different. Instead of a coat of arms, some flags featured a giant silhouette of a bull covering the entire middle third of the flag. The bull, Spain’s national icon, is far more intimidating than any coat of arms. I mean, if anyone could ever really be intimidated by a flag. Come on! (The GOB version.)

The most prominent American symbol is the bald eagle right? If there was such a thing as a bald eagle ring, I’d go in a second. Anyone who could kill an eagle with a sword (assuming it’s flying the hell away from you) should get to kill one, even if it’s endangered. That’s how many Spanish feel about bulls and bullfighting. It’s a 150 pound man against a 1,200 pound bull. If the guy can kill it without getting gored, then good for him. Plus, people eat the meat afterwards so it’s not like it’s a waste.

The only problem with that ideology is that it’s flawed. It’s not man versus beast, it’s men versus beast. About a dozen people combine to kill the bull, the first few tiring him out, the next few stabbing him with smaller dart-like lances, then a few guys on horses trot in to stab him a few more times from their lofty perches (while the horses get the manure gored out of them; don’t worry, they wear armor, even though I don’t know how much it helps), before the torero, Mr. Matador himself comes trotting into the ring in his sequin-covered, pink and white skin-tight costume for the final kill. After the bull’s been bleeding for a good ten minutes, the matador tires him out a little more with his “ole”-ing before killing the bull and exiting stage left. Or right, it’s a circle, so it depends on where you’re sitting. Oh and you’re apparently only supposed to yell “ole” when the matador does an impressive sequence of passes. Basically if it was the Olympics and you felt he should get above an 8.5 or higher for style points in getting the bull to miss the cloth, then you should yell it.

So anyway, the bullfight. We settled into our wooden seats in the front row of the uppermost balcony in probably the oldest building in the city (okay, it’s Spain, it’s probably like, the twelfth oldest, but it’s still old). I sat between the Canadian (we’ll call him…Franklin) and an older gentleman from just outside Valencia who’s a season ticket holder. His name is Vicente. He, of course, started talking to me. Franklin is pretty curious in general, so I became the translator for question after question (yes, some were my own questions) and relayed them onto everyone else.

After the first bull was killed (the matador basically got booed out of the ring—booing in Spanish is actually whistling—for doing such a poor job. Basically, it’s supposed to be fairly swift in the grand scheme of things, and without getting into graphic detail I’ll just say that this first kill was anything but) Vicente explained that they’re taking the bull out back behind the bullring and butchering it on the spot, pointing to where it takes place. A few bulls later (there were six in this event) the Canadian and the two Frenchmen wanted to go see it, and Vicente was happy to lead the way. I didn’t go, and I’m glad I didn’t. Franklin and Vicente came back a few minutes later, Franklin was sweating profusely and didn’t stop sweating the rest of the bullfight. It was a very cool evening by Valencia’s standards. He described what was went on behind the bullring and how it would exceed my expectations of disgustingness (including more details that I won’t share). I’ll be sure to ask him how his nightmares were last night.

Anyway, if the folks in the stands are impressed with a matadors performance, they frantically wave white handkerchiefs/newspapers and, if enough do it, the judge is forced to give the matador a trophy. What are the trophies? The options are: one ear, two ears, or two ears and the tail. Two ears or two ears and a tail are entirely at the discretion of the judge, but if enough people start waving their newspapers around, the judge guy is forced to give the matador at least an ear. Now, only the 19-year-old got an ear after his first fight, because frankly he was really really good at what he was doing. Each matador went twice, and the young guy was very last. Again, he was particularly good (or the other two were just not really good), the crowd went nuts, and he got another ear. What does two ears mean? Well apparently it means that you do a victory lap around the inside of the ring and then, in the cheesiest move of all time, you get the honor of being carried out of the ring into the Plaza de Toros of whatever city you’re in to the adoration of everyone, except for the PETA-style folks who are protesting outside. And by the adoration of everyone I mean everyone over 50. We were legitimately the only people in the whole place who were under 50 years old. I mean, watching the guy get carried out was cool I guess, but it felt like it was the end of a bad 80s movie where it freezes on the kid with his fist in the air as he's carried off after sweeping the legs or something and then they roll the credits underneath the still shot. So anyway, this teenager gets carried out on some guy's shoulders, gets to the street, and then gets tossed into a van with his name on it like Will Ferrell’s his pledgemaster, and the van goes speeding off.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is a halfway decent summary of a bullfight, minus the part where I tell you about how one bull bled profusely out of his mouth because the first matador was so terrible that the thing suffocated on its own blood. Oh! I said I wasn’t going to explain that part. Sorry!


P.S. Felix and his brother went again the next night and took 629 pictures (seriously). A matador the next night actually got tossed (not gored) by a bull (I wish I had seen it live, I was waiting outside for them so we could get dinner and there was just a huge collective groan from the crowd, I was pretty sure someone died). They have a great picture of it and I'll post it here when I get it from them.